And yet I also know that there's nothing wrong about it, whatsoever. That's the angle we're taking: today's modern woman (and man) works hard and plays hard. Pour a glass of wine, turn on a CD, relax, and have some fun. So far, so good. Nothing wrong with that, nothing wrong with talking about sex... or fantasising. So why does it embarrass me?

The copy, needless to say, tiptoes around the subject in a giggly, drunken fashion. Lots of innuendo without resorting to (stereo)type. But why is sex embarrassing? And who decided that it should be? At what point in history did this happen.... and why??

Monday, August 14, 2006

Toybox

Reading MaryB's post on toys of her youth reminded me of a few old favourites of my own!

This Fisher Pricerecord player is one of my earliest memories of the toy box. It was brilliant having a real record player that you could wind up and change discs on. It played an assortment of nursery rhymes, so our parents probably lived to regret buying it.

I was amazed that Spirograph is such a consistent classic, across oceans as well as generations. I think I lost most of the parts before I could over-use it, like many others, escaping a probable fate of OCD or an engineering career.

The toys you love undoubtedly say a lot about you, but I'm not ashamed to admit to being very fond of Love-a-lot bear from the Care Bear family. Mine had worn patches and a squashed-in nose from being made to "talk".

The boys had Crossbows and Catapaults, which I never really got into, maybe because I would walk into rooms and be struck across the head by flying arrows or plastic rocks. (I wonder if they still have that one. The dog would enjoy playing Catapaults...)

Even with these delights, I seem to remember our toy selection being fairly minimal. Probably because we were mostly locked in the garage with wood and nails... Actually, we always spent more time outside than in. Constructing go-karts from old doors and skateboards, on which we would hurtle down the drive and into oncoming traffic at the bottom. Or climbing trees in order to jump from the top. Or building dens from branches and leaves on the traffic island in our road. (We were so good, our dens actually had two storeys. You couldn't spend too long on the top floor, especially if Neily was on the bottom floor, but those branches held pretty good. Mostly)